A quick perusal through our slideshow above, which — be warned — does include some gut-wrenching photos, offers a glimpse into what hunting and poaching were like more than a century and a half ago. Some of the photos date back to the 1850s; others are as recent as 1950.

Though many reveal a different mindset about wildlife than most people now have, poaching still exists today, as evidenced by the seizure of 4,800 pounds of smuggled ivory in Hong Kong on Friday. The bust was the fifth since October 2012 and worth an estimated $2.25 million, according to The New York Times. In the photo accompanying the Times piece, mounds of elephant tusks cover the floor — a shot eerily similar to two undated images in our slideshow revealing piles of ivory as far as the eye can see.

Under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), trading ivory or any other elephant parts is illegal. CITES has created a program and database specifically intended to track the movement of these products around the world. And as recently as May, CITES received National Ivory Action Plans from eight countries “as a response to the dramatic rise in the number of elephants poached for their ivory,” the organization reported.

In an image in the slideshow, taken around 1853, a stuffed leopard is posed on a rock in South London. Today, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) describes these smallest of the big cats as “near threatened,” mainly due to heavy commercial hunting in Asia, poorly managed legal trophy hunting and habitat loss and fragmentation, according to the non-profit Panthera. Leopards have gone extinct in six countries they used to occupy.

When many of the earliest images above were taken, hunting rules didn’t exist in the United States; Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the first big regulations in 1937, known as the Pittman-Robertson Act. CITES, an international body aimed at ensuring that trading wild plant and animal species doesn’t harm their long-term survival, wasn’t formed until 1973.

Of note, poaching, trophy hunting and regulated hunting are very different. Poachers, by their definition, disregard the laws in place to protect the animals. Trophy hunting and hunting are both regulated industries.

The IUCN’s Species Survival Commission describes the former as regulated by a legitimate governing body, with low volume killed and “characterized by hunters paying a high fee to hunt an animal with specific ‘trophy’ characteristics.”

The latter generates $23 billion annually in the United States, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Data from 2006, the most recent available, revealed that more than 12 million people call themselves hunters; that group hunted 200 million days that year. Plus, they contribute significantly to conservation efforts: “The sale of hunting licenses, tags and stamps is the primary source of funding for most state wildlife conservation efforts,” USFWS reports. “Individual hunters [who follow regulations] make a big contribution towards ensuring the future of many species of wildlife and habitat for the future.”

The U.S. government takes seriously those who don’t abide by these rules. Unlawful wildlife killing frequently results in fines, hunting suspensions, even prison time. In June a four-year operation in North Carolina and Georgia uncovered illegal poaching of bears and other wildlife and resulted in sentences for 10 individuals.